Exodus

Exams end at lunchtime today, and then we're on an Exodus, restarting school on Wednesday morning. After that, a very busy time generally in school, and a particularly busy time for this blog as we start posting TY Extended Essays, junior book reports, another Everybody Writes day, and lots more on the run-in to the end of term.

'Henry VIII' on Wordle

No 33 in our Shakespeare Wordles series : Henry VIII.

Wordles are created by Jonathan Feinberg's online tool here; the more times the word appears in the text, the larger the word. In our Shakespeare Wordles, the entire text, including the name indicators of the characters before they speak, is included. Thus you can see how relatively dominant a character is in each play, as well as spot recurring ideas and themes. Our Wordles use different numbers of 'maximum words'. Click on the image for a closer view.

Guerrilla Poet Strikes Again

Recently we published a 'poem' by one Charmaine Munch (Trelawny), which the Librarian had found lying around the Library. Now another poet, with suspiciously similar nomenclature, has deposited another piece in the Senior Reading Room. It's called 'An Irish Scientist Foresees his Test', and was clearly written immediately after the famous 'Hand of Frog' in Paris. You can read the whole moving work by 'Seosamh Plantagenet-Truce (Billabong)' here.

We suspect that the mystery author may be one of the froggy types lurking in the Science Block, especially since they responded very quickly to Monsieur Henry's perfidy here.

English Teaching 5

It's worth teachers checking out David and Ben Crystal's site Shakespeare's Words, based on their glossary and 'language companion' of the same name - annotations, a glossary, 'play circles' of characters (such as this one on As You Like It), and a wealth of other interesting material.

'Much Ado About Nothing' on Wordle

No 32 in our Shakespeare Wordles series : Much Ado About Nothing.

Wordles are created by Jonathan Feinberg's online tool here; the more times the word appears in the text, the larger the word. In our Shakespeare Wordles, the entire text, including the name indicators of the characters before they speak, is included. Thus you can see how relatively dominant a character is in each play, as well as spot recurring ideas and themes. Our Wordles use different numbers of 'maximum words'. Click on the image for a closer view.

Many Eyes Visualization of 'King Lear'

The Many Eyes website has in its stable the great Wordle tool, but also plenty of other ways of presenting and 'visualizing' data. This includes text, and we've been experimenting by in-putting the entire text of King Lear. The one below is a 'Word Tree' version of the play: just type in any word, and watch as all references magically 'branch out' (with a count of the number of instances). You can zoom in by clicking the example. This might be particularly useful for key words, such as 'nothing', or 'love'. Teachers could have a bit of useful fun in class, too: ask pupils to predict how important/regular a word is, or have a quickfire 'Who said this?' game.

[note: requires Java Plugin. FAQs here.]

Short Story Competition 4

The last of this collection of Junior Cert stories, all starting with the same sentence. Sadhbh Sheeran wrote this story, which opens :-

From the other side of the wall I could hear the footsteps getting closer. It was definitely now or never. I took a few deep breaths to steady myself. Then I started to hit and kick the steel door hoping to grab the person’s attention. The echo of my attack on the door was starting to come back, creating a pulsing feeling at the back of my eyes and my knuckles throbbing but I ignored the pain. I wasn’t going to let my glimpse of freedom slip away.

Read Sadhbh's full story here.

'Othello' on Wordle

No 31 in our Shakespeare Wordles series : Othello.

Wordles are created by Jonathan Feinberg's online tool here; the more times the word appears in the text, the larger the word. In our Shakespeare Wordles, the entire text, including the name indicators of the characters before they speak, is included. Thus you can see how relatively dominant a character is in each play, as well as spot recurring ideas and themes. Our Wordles use different numbers of 'maximum words'. Click on the image for a closer view.

St Columba's on Twitter

The school is now 'tweeting' on its Latest News page, with up to date news on events and the school schedule. Also available on the Twitter site itself here.

English Teaching 4

If you're an English teacher, why not join the English Companion social networking 'ning' ('where English teachers meet to help one another')? To read a very thorough article about it, click here. There are now almost 10,000 teachers on it, and lots of groups, such as 'Reading Strategies', 'Teaching Shakespeare' and 'Using Blogs and Wikis in the English Classroom'. The ethos is very supportive. It's currently strongly American-orientated, but anyone can join in.

Credit to founder Jim Burke for setting it up... and we're sure plenty of others have done so, but we've also nominated it for the 2009 Edublog Awards in the 'social networking' category.

'Cracks' trailer

18 months ago, Cracks was partly filmed at the College. It's now about to be released, and here's the official trailer (you can see glimpses of the Chapel and the Dining Hall).

Edublog Awards

Nominations for the the 2009 Edublog Awards have opened (we were delighted with last year's results...), the premier educational internet awards, and we'd like to nominate in these categories:-

• Best Group Blog: The Frog Blog
• Best Individual Blog: The Frog Blog
• Best New Blog: SCC Art
• Best Educational Use of a Social Networking Site : English Companion
• Best Teacher Blog: The Frog Blog

Short Story Competition 3

Now another of the 'wall' short story competition entries: Nicole Cosgrove from III form wrote a story based on something very much in the news at the moment, the 20th anniversary of the breaking of the Berlin Wall :


On the other side of the wall I could hear the footsteps getting closer; it was definitely now or never, and the air of anticipation hung heavy that night in the City. No words were spoken. None were needed; we all knew what the others were thinking. People went about their business that night as usual, nothing was said, but everything was understood.

Read Nicole's full story here.

'Richard II' on Wordle

No 30 in our Shakespeare Wordles series : Richard II.

Wordles are created by Jonathan Feinberg's online tool here; the more times the word appears in the text, the larger the word. In our Shakespeare Wordles, the entire text, including the name indicators of the characters before they speak, is included. Thus you can see how relatively dominant a character is in each play, as well as spot recurring ideas and themes. Our Wordles use different numbers of 'maximum words'. Click on the image for a closer view.

First Library Staff selection

Mr McConville has started off an interesting development in the Library, which is to ask members of staff to select books which have particularly influenced them in the past, and which they would like to recommend and, briefly, write about. These books will then be displayed in the Library, together with the teacher's comments. SCC English has always been keen on sharing book enthusiasms by both pupils and staff, and this is an excellent project.

First up is Mr Peter Jackson (not unrelated to our amphibian friends), whose selection is primarily scientific, and which you can read here (pictured, the display itself).

Among the non-scientific books he has chosen are two books set in Africa - Joyce Cary's Mr Johnson and Alan Paton's Cry, The Beloved Country - and, rather closer to home, The Crock of Gold, by James Stephens, about which Peter writes :-

I have always enjoyed 'Fairy Stories' and this is an essential one. I first read it when I was about 17 (a long, long time ago) and was enthralled by the descriptive charm of author. It is based on the life of Fionn McCool who lived here on Kilmashogue Mountain. Little did I dream as I read, and re-read it, that this is where I would spend the majority of my life. Fairy tales do come true!

Next stop, our Classical and Business Studies colleague, Mr Peter McCarthy. We'll be reporting on all these staff selections as they're displayed.

Kavanagh: our poet for the recession?

In today's Irish Times, Alan O'Riordan has a feature which is worth reading on Patrick Kavanagh (on the Leaving Cert course for both 2010 and 2011), called 'Kavanagh's Lessons for Simple Living'. He writes:-

Denied his travel and his products, the cosmopolitan thinks life has stopped, when perhaps what is needed is to develop a talent for simplicity and for staying put, either out of necessity or because of a realisation that we have all “tasted and tested too much”. That quote is no accident – for Patrick Kavanagh could be the poet laureate of the post-Celtic Tiger age.

O'Riordan also mentions poems on the LC course such as 'Epic', 'Advent', 'Canal Bank Walk' and 'The Hospital. Full article here.

English Teaching 3

Our pupils start exams this week, so an appropriate post as the third of an occasional series for English teachers... We'll post some more English teachers' recommendations over the next few days.

Teachit, the British-based resource for English teaching online, has an excellent clock/timer for class tests/exams for display via projector (it can be used from the site, or downloaded to your computer). It can also be used for a sequence of timings within a lesson. You can set it in a variety of ways, and have options too for alerts and alarms (including a whistle, gong, woof and baa!). It's well-designed, being clear and big, and will keep your pupils on schedule... They've got an advice sheet here on how it can be used.

So set that sheep alarm and get going...

'Timon of Athens' on Wordle

No 29 in our Shakespeare Wordles series : Timon of Athens

Wordles are created by Jonathan Feinberg's online tool here; the more times the word appears in the text, the larger the word. In our Shakespeare Wordles, the entire text, including the name indicators of the characters before they speak, is included. Thus you can see how relatively dominant a character is in each play, as well as spot recurring ideas and themes. Our Wordles use different numbers of 'maximum words'. Click on the image for a closer view.